Shattered Fae

A Twisted Start

How can I miss something I’ve never had? Why does my heart ache for someone I’ve never known? My dad, he left me some memoirs, but it’s not the same. My entire life my mom had me thinking he was dead. I grew up thinking he was watching over me from above. Hahaha, what a beautiful thought right?

Just recently I saw him on the news to my surprise. This time he had actually passed away. That tore a completely new gaping hole in my soul. I couldn't fathom how my mother could blatantly lie to me like that for years. I shouldn’t have been so stunned by that, it’s not like that was the only lie she has ever convinced me of.

I wouldn’t expect anything less from an addict. She isn’t addicted to drugs, most days I find myself wishing she had that excuse. Her addiction is pain and codependency is her drug of choice. At least that was her only addiction for most of my life growing up. She now self medicates with whatever she can numb her sadness with.

I can’t blame her for being a bad mother, she barely had a mom growing up herself. When my mom was younger her mother had married four different men, at different times of course. The first man my grandmother had married was my mother’s father, he must have saw the crazy after he had married her. He jumped ship and abandoned them. Like myself my mother grew up without her father. The next fellow my grandma had married was abusive towards my mom. He r***d her when she was three, twisted it into her head that she wanted “it” even though she had no idea what “it” was. I couldn’t tell you why my grandmother had divorced him because my mom hadn’t told her. The third man my grandmother had married was pretty much just like the second guy. He was a drunk, a pedophile, and abusive in more than one way. Again I have no idea why my grandmother went through yet another divorce, because my mom still hadn’t told her. Who could blame her? She was a scared little girl. The last man my grandma married might have been the worst, he was a mental and emotional bully. He built my mother’s self esteem up so that he could destroy it just as easily. They got divorced as well.

So all before the time my mom was thirteen she had gone through four “dads,” and was an emotional wreck. When my mom was about twelve she finally had the courage to tell my grandma what had been happening to her, the abuse she was getting from the men my grandma had let into her life. I can only imagine the amount of guilt that put on my grandma, I think she broke under the pressures of being a mom and messing up that horrible..

My grandma made a terrible choice after hearing that news. She decided to shoot herself in the head while my mom was at school. My mom came home and found my grandmas brain splattered on the wall, all that blood from her suicide burned into my mother’s brain. That is a demon that can’t be shaken no matter how much you try.

My theory on all of this is when someone is young and they experience something as traumatizing as that - their brain stops developing. My mom’s body may have aged, in her mind, I think she remained twelve. So I basically have come to the conclusion my sister and I were raised by a little girl.

While taking all of that into account I still find this sort of resentment and hatred towards my mom and the decisions she has made. I see my sister Josie as more of my parental role than my own mother. Which isn’t fair to Josie at all.

Josie is six and a half years older than me, so to put parental responsibility on someone a few years older than I am is a really ridiculous thought. No matter how ludicrous that thought is - Josie did it humbly and gracefully for years. Josie was there for me during most of my hard times growing up. She has always been there to protect me from the demons my mom has been battling with.

My mom has had this boyfriend named Jonathon from about the time I was two until now. Jonathon is not my most favorite person in this world, in fact he is probably my least favorite person. When I was younger I had at one time considered him my father. Now there is absolutely no way I could ever perceive him as such.

The strongest, most crucial memory I have that is burned into my brain is a time when I was four. I can remember this like it had just happened ten minutes ago. It was summer, we had just moved into these beautiful new apartments. These apartments were absolutely gorgeous, they were in a gated community, the entrance had the most extravagant waterfall which flowed into the pool. The buildings were all four stories tall, colors of brick red, solid dark grey swirling together making the most astonishing color palette. Man, that place was just like a dream come true! All dreams come to an end though.

My mom was at work, my sister off with her friends, Jonathon and I at our new apartment. I had been helping him move and clean all day the place looked immaculate. Elvis pictures and blankets hanging up. Kiss figurines placed randomly but thoughtfully at the same time everywhere. Couches in the rightful place against the wall next to the sliding glass door. Family portraits portraying a happy and functional family lying to anyone who has laid eyes on these pictures hanging above the T.V. 's entertainment center. It was four so I was pooped. I fell asleep in my brand new room on my very old bed. I have no idea how long I was asleep for but I woke up to Jonathon storming into my room mad as all hell, I swear I could see steam seeping from him. He was that heated. He was mad because I fell asleep. He was cussing up a storm.

He said to me “You are nothing but a fat lazy piece of s**t, why even be around when you don’t help for s**t? You’re never going to amount to anything in your life, you might as well just kill yourself now.”

After those hurtful words he just left, I was all alone crying hysterically. I went into the kitchen and found the biggest knife I could, held that cold blade to my throat, pressed it into my throat, and tried to kill myself.

Obviously I didn’t die, my mom had walked in. She looked at me, grabbed the knife and said “You need to be more careful.” Then she walked to her room and shut me out.

I guess anyone would say that that is “bad parenting,” some wouldn’t even consider that parenting. I see it as my life. That incident is one of the many reasons my sister had taken on the role of my mother. I cherish her dearly for that.

I have another memory that really highlights how amazing my sister was for me growing up. Now I have no idea why or how this argument had started and escalated into a physical fight between my mom and Jonathon. All I know is that Josie was defending my mom, Jonathon didn’t take too well to that. I was just in the corner crying because I didn’t understand why everyone was so angry. I was six at this time and Josie was twelve. Finally after about an hour of nothing getting resolved and me just wallowing in the pain that this anger was emitting to me, Josie noticed me. She said “f**k you, you are a crazy bastard, and look at what you’re doing to Timothy.”

She was speaking - well more yelling at Jonathon. She went to my room, packed me a bag, scooped me up and took off. She was my hero in that situation. She has always been my hero, even when she isn’t always around.

When I was about twelve Josie had moved out, I guess she couldn’t deal with the torment of our home. That kind of pressure could be torture for any teen aged girl.

I was devastated.

An even more detrimental event was when I found out she had joined the armed forces, and then the news came she was going to Iraq. My heart had completely broken by that point. The only person in this world I thought that had truly cared about me was now risking their life for no reason. I had never been a supporter of the War in Iraq, especially not now that I knew my dear sister was going there.

I was around thirteen, determined depressed by three different therapists. What was I to do? I had no one at home to trust or talk to. I stopped going to school in eighth grade, I started hanging out with the wrong people who I thought were my best friends. In reality they didn’t care either but how would I notice? I didn’t even know what a family was, let alone a friend. The first time I did meth I was thirteen, I didn’t drink alcohol or smoke weed. I just went right into the big boy drugs, my motto back then was “Anything that can be snorted, will be snorted.” I didn’t care, I railed coke, I railed ecstasy, I railed meth. You name it, it was most likely in my nose.

My best friend wasn’t my mom, my sister, not even Henry who I claimed to be my best friend. No my best friend was Methamphetamine, let me tell you what a mighty good best friend she was.I was addicted to meth before my fourteenth birthday.

How could I have not been addicted? All of my so called friends were drug dealers. I got that seductive glass looking beauty for free anytime of the day I wanted. By the time I was fourteen I was doing about an ounce of meth nearly every day..

Everyone asks me how I could afford that, my answer is how could I not afford that. It wasn’t a craving any longer, it was a need. That beautiful shiny shard was burned into my pores, my mind, my body, every inch of me, every fiber of my being wanted nothing but my best friend.

Why I started doing meth wasn’t because of every other reason my friends wanted to. They wanted to have fun, they wanted to party. I wanted an escape from reality, an escape from my pain, an escape from abuse, an escape from life. I didn’t care whether I would live or die. Most of the time I wished I would do too much and just keel over and die.

Much to my dismay, back then, it didn’t happen. I was going through life not living. How does a person, barely a teenager, lose the will to live at such an early age? I think back now and I wonder what happened to me, what happened to my childhood. My easy answer is that it was stolen from me.

I think the reason why I was so susceptible to turn to drugs so early was because I never really got to be a kid. At an early age, like my sister, I had to take on adult responsibilities. There is no use griping and complaining about a missed childhood, there is no turning back. As much as I would like to erase everything I have done and everything that has been done to me, I can’t.

I can say one thing, even though I have done a lot of bad things, and I mean a lot, I don’t regret a single thing because I wouldn’t be me without those life experiences. My friend Passion and I once robbed a gang of Mexicans. We were fourteen, we made off with over five thousand dollars and at least twelve grams of coke. To this day there is still a hit out on our heads. I can’t even remember why we did it. I have no idea how we were able to get away with it. I think the gang was more mad that they got hoodwinked by a couple of kids than the actual theft.

From the time that I was thirteen to the time that I was almost seventeen I was doing coke every damn day. I can’t even fathom how much money that would equal out to be. That time in my life is almost a blur.

Picking up to a time that I can remember more was when I was fifteen. My sister came back from Iraq to an unfaithful husband who had been stealing her money. When she came back from Iraq she had over thirty five thousand dollars in debt all from her no good husband. Her husband had been stealing the money she had been getting paid along with not paying any of their current bills. What a piece of s**t. My sister needed a quick way to make a lot of money. So she made probably the most idiotic and dumb decision in her life so far, she decided it would be a great idea to start selling ecstasy pills. She became a drug dealer and an addict all in the same moment, absolutely heartbreaking. Now we had two drug addicts in the family, not giving a damn about what would or could happen to us.

Every drug dealer gets caught at one point, no matter how good they may be. For my sister it was the same. Now this wasn’t a regular bust either, someone had died.. There was this other soldier in my sister’s platoon - most of the army people did drugs, this guy had just done too much. He bought a boat or more which is over two hundred pills from Josie because he had said he wanted to start selling. Well, that just so happened to be one big fat lie. This soldier, before talking to my sister, had previously purchased a complete cocktail of other drugs, he bought meth, crack, heroin, coke, as well as a half gallon of some random alcohol. He definitely wanted to die because he ingested every pill my sister had sold to him, drank every last drop of that half gallon to himself, and did all of those other drugs in a combination of different ways. He railed some things, shot up all over his body with others, he smoked the different drugs as well. It wasn’t like he had a party, things got out of hand and he did too much. This man was in his apartment on the military base alone.

I am assuming he was extremely depressed from the things he saw and did while he was serving his country in Iraq. M.P.’s went to his home after a day of him not showing up to his training, he was going to get reprimanded for not showing up and basically defying Uncle Sam. Instead they find him dead.

Of course an investigation had to go on. While the different law enforcement agencies had been sweeping his apartment looking for evidence they came across a drug baggie. Not just any drug baggie, but my sister’s drug baggie and unfortunately for her it had her finger print on it. Although she hadn’t sold all of the different drugs to him she was the only suspect they had. They took her in for questioning and released her. Like anyone in that position she was scared, she was absolutely terrified. I mean she had aided in a man’s suicide. You would have to be out of your mind to not be scared in that kind of a situation. Making yet another stupid decision she ran away. My sister was now a fugitive. Yet another tremendous blow to my heart.

After about a year of being on the run she finally wised up and turned herself in. Surprisingly she didn’t get an extensive amount of time in prison for the original charges and for fleeing. She only got four years I don’t know what the official charge was though. That is an extremely lucky break though. It’s three years Manslaughter for every one ecstasy pill you have. I suppose they didn’t quite know how many pills were involved, but there was still a death.

Not that I am complaining about Josie’s lucky break. I was ecstatic when I heard that that was all the punishment she was getting. Still much to my dismay the last time I had laid eyes on my sister face to face was when I was thirteen and I wouldn’t see her face again until after my eighteenth birthday.

My sister had missed my birthday, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween and every other event I always celebrated with her since I was thirteen. My last birthday she had been to before the military, before dealing drugs, before being on the run, and before prison was my twelfth birthday. Wow I guess I never really realized how many important milestones in my life and in her life we had both truly missed out on with each other.

Now where was I during the time my sister became a drug dealer, a fugitive, and later an inmate in a military prison. I was doing the same thing that Josie was doing, making dumb ass decisions and dealing with the consequences. When I was fifteen my friend Adam and I had bought two fifths of Burnette’s Vodka. Nasty stuff. We were at his house and he lived in Vancouver, Washington at the time while I lived, and still do, in Portland, Oregon.

So it wasn’t too far of a mission but then again it was because we were taking the MAX, C-Tran, and a number of different TriMet buses to get to his house. We had been goofing off all night but got real bored of being bored real fast. We went out for a walk, which turned into a night of car prowling. Boy did we pick the wrong car that night to even be near. I mean in a sense it was the perfect car because it was all unlocked and the keys were in the car. Unbelievable right?! I mean come on now, who leaves their car keys inside their car and then leaves the door unlocked. Someone who is asking for their s**t to get jacked, that’s who. Am I right or am I right? I know regardless of whether or not they deserved it, it wasn’t right. Well we didn’t actually get away with anything.

Adam was in the driver’s seat and for the life of him that dumb ass couldn’t get the car to start. He had been trying for a good ten minutes while I am standing outside the car telling him he must have been dropped on his head when he was a baby because he didn’t know how to start the car. Finally I get fed up with this bullshit because first off it was a really stupid idea to begin with and secondly he couldn’t turn the freaking car on! I told him to get out and quit being dumb. Obviously we weren’t smart enough for the car. He insists he can get it to start. Before he does literally seconds maybe a minute after he had said that the owner of the car comes out of his house because he had left some stupid book in his car. Damn, could things get any worse? Oh you bet your sweet ass they can and the most definitely did. Adam and I sprang with a quickness and like lightning tried to dash away from that scene. This man was chasing us down yelling the most vicious, violent, scary death threats imaginable. I was in fear for my life. We had been running for quite sometime finally that severely angry man had stopped chasing us. Unfortunately he had called the police on us.

Oh no. This was not a good time at all. My mom was going to be so disappointed in me and in the choices I had been making. I guess that is why she had kicked me out previously. Now she would have to deal with me and my delinquent ways. Thinking back my drug use and criminal activities were more of a cry for help than anything. I wanted love and nurturing. I wanted my mom to be the super mom. I wanted my mother to treat me how Josie had treated me. Like her child, not this strange child that just came into existence one day. Anyways that night had pretty much just changed my life forever but did nothing at the same time. I became a convicted Felon at the young fragile age of fifteen. I had lost my right to bear arms, I still to this day cannot be in a house, vehicle or basically anywhere that has a gun. If I am driving my friends car or even a passenger and there is a gun in the car that I am unaware of, I will go to prison. It’s a pretty bum deal. Thankfully I only got a severe slap on the wrist. I got put on probation for a year, forty eight hours of community service and over one thousand dollars in fines. All I can say is I am so happy that in Multnomah County for the Juvenile system, at least, they have this thing called Project Payback. Even though the crime committed happened in Clark County because I lived in Multnomah County it had been transferred for my benefit. So instead of my family or me having to pay for my restitution I did more community service. How it works is every weekend there is a congregation type of thing with kids on probation and Multnomah County Justice Staff who oversee and bring kids to the different places they will be working that day. Juveniles go out on an eight hour period of time doing a number of tasks, they get paid minimum wage per hour but never see a dime of that money because it all goes back to the either people, city, or corporation it belongs to.

Oh my god, I can tell you having an entire year every - Saturday, Sunday, Spring Break, Winter Break, and the entire summer just doing community service is killer. I was raking leaves, cutting raspberry bushes, picking up trash from Downtown Portland that my friends had left the night before partying. During that time I was in my own personal hell.

I got drug tested three times every week, unfortunately for my Probation Officer she wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. I somehow evaded getting caught continuing to smoke meth, do coke, e, and several other drugs. Meth was no longer my best friend, Niacin was. Niacin is a dietary supplement that cleans out your system. I remember I had been in Oregon City the night before I had a drug test and I had done mollie, popped two e pills, smoked probably like four or five blunts and railed adderall. The next morning I had taken ten Niacin pills, my drug test came out clean as a whistle. I was actually quite astonished by that. I thought for sure this would be the time that I got caught, but no, once again I evaded a Probation Violation.

I managed to get through three hundred sixty five days of probation with only one Probation Violation. Let me tell you that was an unfortunate incident. My best friend Henry and I had gone to Battle Ground Washington to go party at our friends house. Well it was more of a kick back than a party. There were about five or six of us two half gallons and probably around twelve rounds of beer pong. In Layman's terms I was definitely blacked out drunk. I was inebriated beyond the point of comprehension. I don’t remember how or why Henry and I had even got into an argument in the first place. I slapped him and he pushed me down a hill. I laid in the dirt for quite sometime I am imagining. It felt only like seconds in my drunken stupor. When I finally realized I was just laying in a pile of dirt I got up, instantly remembered what had happened. I went inside in a rage, ran up the stairs to our friends bedroom and as soon as I saw Henry I saw red. I just walked right up to him and pounded his face, poor guy didn’t know what had hit him. I put him in the hospital that night. Good thing for him another one of our friends was a UFC fighter and he put me in a choke hold. Henry didn’t get it too bad and I was so relieved. Actually after the fight I must have called my mother and she came to Battle Ground Washington to pick me up because I woke up in my room the next day. I was highly confused. I couldn’t even imagine the kind of night I must have had, surprisingly I had no marks on my body. I’m anemic so I usually bruise easily. Anemia isn’t anything terrible, for my anemia it was just a slight iron deficiency. Other people aren’t always as lucky.

Back to something that actually has a point to my life story Henry and I fought. We actually stopped being friends for about three months, but we both knew we could not do that. Since the time that we had met in eighth grade we had been the only ones there for each other. In some respects he was more my brother than my best friend. Like myself Henry came from a broken home as well. He could understand the isolation and disconnect I felt from my family probably more than anyone ever will.

All during Henry’s life his mother was addicted to Heroin and Meth, which I find odd because one is a downer and one is an upper. Most addicts choose only one, but Heroin was more of her drug of choice. It wasn’t just his mom either, both of his older brothers did them too. Tyler and Aiden were much better influences on him.

That could be why nowadays I rarely hear from him and every time I do see him he is loaded. It honestly breaks my heart we grew up together and to just sit and watch him kill himself is tearing me up inside. Everyday I see him inch his way closer and closer to death’s doorsteps. He says he wants to get clean. Just the other day when he was high he said “I know I said that when I moved back to Portland I would stop and get clean, I want you to know that is still my plan. In the meantime don’t stop loving me.” I just broke down in tears. The fact that he could even think that I could potentially stop loving him let’s me know that he knows what he is doing. Henry is just choosing to milk it a little longer, I am just afraid it might be too late for him to realize. I knew he smoked Heroin, about a week before he had said that he told me he started using needles. I was completely taken aback. Especially when he said now that he had used needles he didn’t ever want to go back to smoking it. My god what had happened to the little boy I met in middle school? Who had he become? I can barely recognize this character anymore. His demeanor is the complete opposite of what it used to be. I no longer had my brother from another mother, I had an empty shell of the potential man he could have became.

I know I need to have a serious talk with him. If he is serious about getting clean then I need him to know that I do support hime one hundred percent and that I will do everything I can to make that goal possible. If it’s the latter and he isn’t actually serious about it, as much as it would kill me to do this I would need to get him out of my life. I am trying to move on and grow as a person and I don’t need that kind of toxic waste around me.

God I w